Kenya Update...the Real Story

I'm sure you have heard of the crisis in Kenya right now. I've been very disheartened while reading about the displacement of over 200,000 people on the news as Kenya is close to my heart these days.

I got a chance to talk with Joseph for an extended time this weekend, and he gave me a good picture of what is happening behind the scenes in Kenya. I'll give you a brief picture of his perspective:

He is very thankful that Odinga lost the election to Kibaki. Odinga has been seeking after power relentlessly since leaving President Kibaki's cabinet 5 years ago. Odinga is ruthless in his quest for power, and it would not have been good for the country if he became the President. He is a leader similar to Hussein. Over the past five years, he has attempted to unite tribes within Kenya based on the promise that he would redistrubute land and resources when he became President. He villanizes the President's tribe for hoarding power and wealth to itself and away from the poor. He was able to unite a number of tribes together with the promise of redistribution of wealth.

This is political dynamite in a culture where over 50% of people are unemployed, AIDS has killed 1 in 4 adults, and extreme poverty is prevalent.

What is happening right now with the displacement of people from their land is a result of Odinga's promise to redistrubute land and resources. If Odinga had become President, the same thing would have happened, except it would have been worse because the government would not have stopped it. Currently, the government is working to bring about order and to stop the violence that Odinga would have permitted.

I've heard it said that the biggest threat in the world right now is not terroism, but poverty. Poverty over a long enough time leads to acts of desperation and retaliation.

Since the removal of colonialism, Kenya has faced many challenges, and over the past five years, Kibaki has made better strides than any leader in Kenya's independence in moving them forward. Much more is needed to bring about systemic change in their society.

I'm thankful that I have friends there that are working to bring peace and to be a light in a difficult place.

My prayers are with you CMF, Pastor David, Joseph, and the Africa Hope Center. Pray for this area of the world. For the leadership. For the Africa Hope Center. For missionaries and church leaders there.

my girls and a new friend

here are some recent pics of my girls. The one that isn't mine is Amaya. She is our director of CRM's daughter from Long Beach. We had a great time with them over the last few days. Amaya inspired Hannah to start wearing big girl underwear and she went to the potty for the first time today. Very exciting times in the Paxton household.

Proud of My Wife

Yes, I have been lost from the blogger world.

But, I re-enter out of pride for my wife. Last night, we had David Batstone and the Not for Sale Campaign come to Raleigh to talk about practical steps people and churches can do to end human trafficking.

About 8 months ago, Danielle started reading David's book, and started working with a friend in Los Angeles, Shirley Rayburn, on this issue. I've loved watching her passion and diligence to make something happen. It would be a good conversation sometime to ask her how she became interested and passionate about this intense subject.

Since coming to Raleigh, she has been helping to coordinate a group from Raleigh to activate others towards doing something about the issue. (www.justiceandjubilee.org) Yesterday, we had a great lunch with David Batstone and Justin Dillon at our house with about 15 others, and then held an event in partnership with other churches and the community.

It was an intense evening as you can imagine, but I think the seeds of good things were planted. A number of faith communities and community activists came together, and David not only brought the issue close to home, but gave practical steps of how normal people can use their gifts to be involved.

I'm proud of my wife because she decided to do this even when she was tired, stressed, and not settled in our new home. This transition has been unsettling for us, and Danielle has not just focused on herself and our family, but given of herself to help bring hope to others.

I also know she is tired. I'm proud of you.

Also, Shiloah said Da Da yesterday. That made me happy too.

Kenya Part II: Africa Hope Center

Besides making a friendship with Joseph, the best thing about our time in Kenya was participating in the Africa Hope Center.

One of the beautiful things about the ministry of Africa Hope Center is that it is a grassroots response to a crisis in their own community. They are taking great risks and making really serious sacrifices to not only meet the needs of these kids and provide a family of hope for them, but develop their gifts and create opportunities for the future. These kids are incredibly creative, bright, and resilient. I had so much fun seeing their family of 80 laughing, dancing, learning, growing, and playing together. I want to advocate for them in the best I can because of what they are doing, not because they have it all together (kind of like us).



They are taking care of 80 kids in home that have lost both their parents to AIDS, and ten other kids who have AIDS in partnership with their host family since they currently don't have the facility to take care of them there. The workers in the home are my new heroes. Right now, only five full-time workers care for 80 kids. That is not a great ratio, and I was very inspired to see them selflessly pouring their lives out to serve and love and bring hope to the kids there. And the thing is, they don't see it as sacrifice. It is normal. They are just obeying God through their lives. I think they help us think about obedience different than how we think about it in our culture when it is convenient for us. Where service is extra credit for us, service is life for them.













I will never forget learning the stories of the kids in the center, seeing their creativity expressed through dance, story, drama, and poems. They spoke from the soul and touched mine. We also had some really good ice cream together and they played balloon volleyball like I've never seen.


For those of you who are interested in their needs, there are multiple ways to get involved financially, investing in prayer, or preparing to go spend time with them in the future:

• we found someone to do the website: thank you Amy Williams!

• they need more sponsorship money for all of the kids- right now, they are about half-sponsored a piece, so they need 100 people to donate between 25 and 50 dollars a month.

• they need to hire more full-time workers- I'd like to see 10 hired. Their monthly salary is $250

• they are just starting the initial stages of planning the development of the care center (they are currently renting one in Kayole), and need about 20,000 more dollars to buy the land

• we need a team of people to help care for kids and workers, provide teacher/child care worker training, brainstorm with micro-finance options, people who want to build/clean/dig stuff, job training and e-commerce, leadership/development, counseling care

One of the beautiful things about having such a good relationship with Joseph is that we get to help meet needs together as a global family in Christ. I was changed as much as I touched anyone's life there. For one, I have friends on the other side of the world that motivate me to live for Christ. My family got a lot bigger. For two, I am motivated to live more simply, obediently, and sacrificially. For three, I had a lot of fun joking with Joseph and learning from the way they carry out their ministries. For four, I will never forget the sights, smells, stories, and kids I encountered there.

I'd love to talk more with anyone who is interested

I love the Paxton Girls

I couldn't help but post about my girls tonight. Today, Hannah and daddy ran around in the rain for about a half and hour chasing each other laughing from our bellies. We couldn't have had more fun. Shiloah is still not sleeping through the night, but is sweet as can be throughout the day. She likes to flap her arms a lot and make squeally noises.

Journey to Kenya Part One: Brother Joseph

We certainly have had a lot going on in the last two months, and now I am at a point to process some of our experiences.

It will be hard for me to process the Kenya trip shortly so I will start a three part blog post so that people will actually read this. (your welcome shannon and daniel)

The most significant part of the trip for me was building a friendship with Joseph and learning from him as a leader. For a year, we spent a lot of time emailing and talking on the phone and felt a strong connection, but had not actually met in person because he was in Georgia doing work on his PHD. Honestly, I was a little nervous about how we would connect, and if it would be a long two weeks.





The connection with Joseph really couldn't have gone better. Besides for a few small culture 'moments' (one is a really good story that involved "Serious" preaching and Jason being forced to play the guitar at one of the most funny church scenarios I've ever experienced), we couldn't have asked for better experience with Joseph. He took us all over Kenya from the slums of Kibera and Soweto to his childhood town in the mountains north of Nairobi to a tribal village in the Northern region of Kenya to where we spent most of our time in Kayole, a rapidly growing area of Nairobi where his central ministry and the Hope Center is located.

The focus of this blog post is to process what I learned from Joseph and share his story. Joseph is a very savvy, passionate, and servant-oriented leader with a great sense of humor. He has more character and faith than I can ever hope to aspire to. Joseph grew up in a peasant-tea farming family about 2 hours north of Nairobi. He grew up taking care of cows, his family, and the farm and his father died when he was young. In high school, he had a radical conversion experience and he became passionately involved in ministry. We laughed that he had so much zeal that his first pulpit was the mountain outside of his house where he preached his devotionals to his town every morning when he would wake up. While we road up to visit his mom (who is 89), I really enjoyed hearing him laugh talking with one of his friends from former ministry days about their often misdirected, but radically passionate zeal to spread the gospel (which I could relate to a bit). Joseph got very involved with the evangelical, pentecostal movement in Kenya, and was very active in street evangelism and outreach from an early age. He did very well in school and went to the prestigious Nairobi College where he continued to be more concerned with crusades and Jesus than school and degrees (again, I can relate to that).







After he graduated from college and got married, he and his wife moved into the slums of Kibera (the third largest slum in the world) and planted a church for two years. Then, God called them to plant a church in the growing area of Kayole. Since then, that church has become a sending ground for other churches to unreached areas of Nairobi and Kenya. Currently, they have a missionary living in an unreached tribal group in Northern Kenya that we visited and helped deliver medical supplies to. (That was the day I was more afraid of my life than any other before we got on the plane). In that culture, since Joseph is the overseer of about 6 churches and various ministries, he is considered a bishop.

One of the things I love about Joseph is his great sense of humor and humility about his role. He does not want to be called a bishop because he thinks titles are too important in his culture and people end up relying on their leader more than serving their community in the character of Christ (sound familiar). That is inspiring. Rather than just only focusing on preaching (which he is very gifted at), he is trying to empower his community to take risks as ministers, take care of the orphans, and take risks to love and serve those that don't know Christ. That is inspiring as well.

His continual relationship with Christ was contagious as well. I learned from him in a different way what pray without ceasing looked like. After spending time with the leaders of the orphan center, I said that I want to pray for those people- meaning tonight and when I get home, and Joseph just said okay, pray. I thought, why do I wait to pray for people so often? I appreciated ability to not take himself too seriously, but to take Christ very seriously.

I came away with a great friend that I pray we can encourage each for a life time.



Next post coming soon (yes that was a retraction)

#^$* Happens

Forgive the gross-ness of the post

Literally...

So, our ceptic tank broke outside of our house this weekend, so I spent most of the afternoon shoveling our own excrement into a hole I dug in my yard.

I think I will stay away from that side of the yard for a while, although I think it will be a very fertile region.

It turns out that since our house was built in 1950, the ceptic pipes are pretty rusty, and when we have been using the flushable, G-Diapers, they have been getting caught on the rust.

Two lessons from this experience

- trying to do our part to take care of our world (using g-diapers)- has some unexpected consequeces, literally messy ones- why is that when you try to do something positive, it ends up messy so often?
- another reminder that *^&*(% happens

Stay tuned for more adventures from Raleigh

How I Felt After Friday

I know this is a repeat post of a video, but I couldn't help it for two reasons- 1) I laugh at it 2) I have felt like a bit of a machine at times while trying to finish school, and I finished my last exam for the summer this Friday. I will just say, that was one of the last things I wanted to be doing right now as we are getting moved into to our new place and trying to get to know people in Raleigh. I fought the final work hard, but I persevered.

While finishing the details on my exam, I was struck at how so often we learn through processes that we don't like. I think there is a little lie I believe at times that tells me life is supposed to be easy for me to enjoy it. Sometimes we feel like we just have to get through xx until we start living and then feel like this robot. One of the things I've sensed God saying to me during the process is-- learn to breathe while running the race and experience my peace knowing I am with you even when it burns.

We are Alive and Well...

It has been a long time since my last post. My head has been spinning a bit since we got back from Africa. To say the least, we have a lot of change in the last 5 weeks.

I will need to do some flashbacks during my blog to be able to process all this. I also want to share many of my experiences from leaving seminary and then in Africa, as well as some good stories about moving into a house we hadn't seen in person in Raleigh.....

So stay tuned....I am currently finishing my final exams for one of my classes from Fuller so I'll start the story next week.

But as for now, here are some of the pictures of Africa. Below is Joseph (the founder of this ministry), and Jason (my friend from Raleigh, one of the pastors of our new church Visio Dei), and me (with balloons and kids). It really was a great experience and I look forward to sharing stories with friends and family. I was inspired by the work they are doing, and want to do everything I can to help them care for the kids that have lost their parents to AIDS. A little bit over there goes along way!

Missing you, Daddy!

It dawned on me I could post a blog all by myself while Corey is in Africa ("Af-uhkup" as Hannah says). It wasn't that hard to figure out, now if I can just get this dang "easy share" camera to load the pictures I can show you a little bit of what we've been doing here with Shishaw and Pawpaw! We love you, CoreyDaddy and can't wait to see you again!

Some notable things that are happening:

1. Shiloah is on the verge of cutting her two bottom teeth! I can see them in there and she has been quite miserable. We got her some magic teething tablets that are helping her out a lot.

2. Shiloah is also eating a lot of solid food now -- she doesn't like any of the fruits we have given her but enjoyed her carrots today. She eats her rice cereal like a champ and has adjusted quite nicely to a four hour feeding schedule, thankfully.

3. Hannah can now immitate a froggie, a flamingo, a hippo and a scary tiger. She gets the biggest kick out of scaring people with her tiger immitation. Last night when Pawpaw came home she almost laughed herself drunk because of how funny it was to scare him! It was the hardest I have ever seen her laugh, from deep inside her belly!

4. Shiloah is sitting up almost perfectly now, but topples over ever so often. She's tough, though.

5. Hannah has been a doctor, a princess, a kitty kat, and gotten to do so many fun things around the house with Shishaw. That's the first person she cares about in the morning. All she wants me for now is owies and bedtimes, diaper changes and a few other things. She loves her Shishaw!

I just realized that we have far more pictures of Hannah than Shiloah during our time here. Poor Shaft-shew! Always getting the shaft. Isn't she just the sweetest thing ever?

I love you, Corey, I can't wait for you to come home!